Rednecks by Taylor Brown

 Set in the coal fields of West Virginia in the 1920s, Rednecks is a book of historical fiction recounting the Battle of Matewan and the Battle of Blair Mountain. Author Taylor Brown has mixed fictional characters--including one based on his great-grandfather Dr. Domit Simon Sphire--among those who witnessed and participated in this period of upheaval among unionized coal miners and the coal barons.

 

The Matewan Massacre occurred on May 19, 1920, in Matewan, West Virginia, when Chief of Police Sid Hatfield and union miners stood up to the cutthroat agents from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency who had just turned out the miners’ families and their belongings into the mud. The penalty for joining the union was firing from the job and eviction from mine housing. Among the dead were two of the Felts brothers along with five of their detectives, two miners, and one teenage bystander. Gutshot Mayor Cabel Testerman would be dead before the day was over.

 

A year later, the surviving detectives from the Massacre were found “not guilty,” and the union miners were still on strike, living in a downtrodden canvas tent camp. In the meantime, Hatfield, a relative of Devil Anse Hatfield, has had an encounter with one of the mine owners, for which he would be charged with assault.

 

Skirmishes between striking union workers and the Baldwin-Felts thugs paired with vigilantes continued, leading up to the Blair Mountain charge that is the largest labor uprising in United States history, the largest armed uprising since the Civil War. Ten thousand coal miners fought the battle for miners’ rights against mine owners, state militia, and the federal government for five days from late August to early September in 1921. The miners wore red bandannas around their necks, giving origin to the term “rednecks.”

 

This May 14 release by Taylor Brown is the author’s sixth novel. His first three novels were all finalists for the Southern Book Prize: Fallen Land (2016), The River of Kings (2017), and Gods of Howl Mountain (2018). He grew up on the Georgia Coast and has lived in Western North Carolina. Currently a resident of Savannah, Georgia, he is the founder and editor-in-chief of BikeBound, one of the world's leading custom motorcycle publications.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting March 30, 2023.

I would like to thank St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.